A month ago a game of mine was struck with a DMCA takedown notice. The game was taken down under review, together with a CD (content deleted).
I was then required to remove any infringing content from within my games.
Once I’ve made the required changes I quickly realized I’m unable to update the game by publishing a corrected version. This can only be done through Roblox Studio, and any attempt to publish to the affected place results in a failure. I expect this is due it being under review.
Attempting to appeal the game, with the information above stating that I wish to update the game to comply, is declined almost immediately with the usual response from the DMCA team that I would need to get the owner’s permission to restore the content. The thing is, I do not wish to restore the original content but to correct it. Any further communication with the DMCA team results in automated responses that do not assist me the slightest.
Both the IP holder’s party and Roblox insist that I remove the infringing content, but Roblox is being a roadblock here at the moment.
What does this result in? The game is completely down and I won’t be able to make use of any Roblox content that ties to it (badges, developer products, developer stats, etc.). I can start over on a new game, which I’ve done for the time being, but it’s not a complete solution as I’ve lost the mentioned Roblox content associated to the game.
I’ve contacted support if there’s a way that I can update my game to the corrected version such that it can be properly reviewed to be opened again, but this goes through either the appeals team or DMCA team, which results in, yet again, the above responses.
What can I do to get my game out of ‘under review’ and open with the corrected version?
I had this happen with a game of mine that I unfortunately titled something like ‘Suspension test with F0rmula 1 cars’ earlier this year.
Apparently the folks over at f0rmula0ne didn’t like me using their name in the title, so the place was under review for a while and then got deleted. There was no other content of theirs in the game except for some race car models I had built that looked like their cars, but were built by me. No advertising, no signs, no images, etc.
Funny thing is there are a bunch of places on Roblox with that name, and tons of models with that name as well…
I never got much of an answer from Roblox. Luckily I’ve been saving my places to my computer files whenever I “Publish to Roblox”, since Roblox’s AutoSave is garbage.
I made a new place and published my saved work without their name in the title and it hasn’t been touched yet. I took the Content Deleted place and made it Private.
That’s rough to hear. I’ve searched around and it seems more are struggling to get anything back out of ‘under review’.
Surely that can’t be correct? I can understand about assets like decals and audio as you cannot modify those, but a game may consist of countless of assets. Certainly if something is not right, developers should be presented the option to make corrections on that same game?
Yeah, but think of the lawyers involved if the copyright laws are even the least bit crossed.
In my case it was probably someone from the company named that found or heard of or searched out any games with that name in the title and mine had enough visits that it got their attention.
Roblox would only have to spend money in a court case.
It’s easier for them just to delete the game on their side and tell the lawyers that it’s been taken care of.
If they went through the hassle of letting me know what was wrong, waiting for me to rectify it (some people wouldn’t, others may not look at their account or messages for months) and proving to the lawyers that it’s all fixed that’s not as easy.
I can understand this as an initial response to the company to take care of things, but that could still leave the option afterwards between Roblox and the developer for corrections. The game is still set under review, so the developer could make corrections, notify Roblox of this, Roblox reviews the changes and if approved can re-enable the game.
If your game was only taken down due its name, a name change after the takedown would suffice as correction.
Why there’s not an option for this is beyond me. There’s already the moderation strike as penalty. The fact the game is permanently taken down is too far. Too much is lost with this, such as players’ save data.
Well I finally got a response back from Roblox regarding the corrections that I’ve made.
Unfortunately, Roblox says that, even though I have made corrections, there could still be infringing content in the game and I would need to sort this out with the party that submitted the takedown notice before Roblox will do any action. Basically I need the party’s verification and permission that it can be reopened due all infringing content being removed.
The other problem is that the party refuses to communicate with me about this takedown notice and only do this if responded directly to this notice, which is sent to Roblox and not me.
The final problem is that Roblox cannot (or will not) get the permission on my behalf, which means if I want to do this myself Roblox would need to find a way for me to respond to the original takedown notice they have, which sounds very questionable whether Roblox is able to assist me in that.
As I’ve mentioned to Roblox, uploading the corrected version to a new game kinda circumvents the entire takedown as well as the permission required, but will bring much heavier losses, such as the loss of datastore and thus player save data.
We’ll see if Roblox is able to forward me directly to the party through the original takedown notice.